WHAT WE’VE READ! – May Edition

Book, zines, publications you name it, we have it! WHAT WE’VE READ! will be sharing artist books from across the country and world. Different subject matters, various book styles and edits to get you inspired and excited about books. Printed matter is a big part of what we love and do here at Aint-Bad and this is our virtual library. So come, join us and perhaps even purchase yourself a new book for your own personal photo library because – there is no such thing as having too many photo books! This project is on an ongoing submission base so keep submitting your books, you might be in the next edition.

Chris Moody, ACROSS, 2017
ACROSS is a zine highlighting moments spent traveling across the country on it’s many paths. With images from the first cross country trip in 2011 to the last journeys of 2017, ACROSS is a composite of images of the last years on the move. Reclaiming the states and their borders, Moody piled his photographs in a collage like manner creating a unique shape similar to many states. With the state of these last years everything is still uncertain, especially nature and the free will to travel, ACROSS was printed to continue this notion that nature is superior and these remaining wilds are valuable and not to be destroyed. (self-made on all recycled/reused papers)Price: $15Publisher: horse gurl pressArtist Website: cargocollective.com/chrismoodyAdd to your own Library collection

Fiona Filipidis, To Make A Prairie, 2017
Will revery alone really do if bees are few? As much as I love to daydream, I’m afraid the answer is a resounding, gut-wrenching ‘NO’. Bees are crucial to the continuation of human life. But our impact on the environment through the misuse of insecticides, added to the proliferation of pests and diseases and loss of habitat, is threatening the survival of this mighty insect. When bees have access to good nutrition, so do we – you can thank them for one in three bites of food you eat – and yet every batch of pollen has at least six pesticides in it.

From poetry to politics, religion to architecture, the honey bee has managed to waggle-dance itself into every nook and cranny of the human world. Our relationship with the bee is one that spans thousands of years, and I have attempted to synthesise it in one single project. This project was conceived as a book, divided into 6 chapters, each one edited in a specific way: a piece of writing is preceded by a full-page image and followed by a selection of images in relation to the text.

The full-page images are of the stormy skies that descended over London on 16th October 2017, when hurricane Ophelia made her way to our shores. All I could hear and read at the time was, “It’s the end of the world!” and I couldn’t help but find a parallel with what could potentially happen if bees were to become extinct. The texts are a mix of personal life experiences and detailed knowledge about the honey bee and its history in relation to us. By writing in an informal, playful tone, my aim is to engage with a wide-ranging audience. The imagery is a mix of found artefacts and my own photographs. Mingling the past with the present is my way of showing our constant and ever-growing relationship with the honey bee. I wanted to play around with the visual representation of the bee, and my image pairings are often comical and bounce off one another. My decision to use various types of pictures was to constantly excite the reader’s eye and not let it become accustomed to one type of image. My hope is that there is something for everyone in this book; if a teenager were to pick it up and see a photo of Beyoncé, I would love for it to peak their curiosity and push them to do a little bit of digging.

This project is more relevant now than ever. Every day, news articles emerge with ever-growing alarming headlines about bees and insects. We humans hold their fate in our millions of hands. By some unimaginable, intangible natural power, we have been given the gift of life, and it is our duty to make sure all living entities that share our cosmos continue on the path they were meant to take.Publisher: Self PublishedArtist Website: www.fiona-filipidis.comAdd to your own Library collection

Thomas Whitworth, Constructed Realities, 2018
A hard cover 60+ page book 8.5″ x 11.5″ that presents fifty photographic diptychs created from anonymous nude male and female portraits purchased off of eBay alongside setup still lifes, snapshots, and real world views. The combined images present possible narratives and histories for the previously unrelated photographs and serve as modern examples of the suggestive power of the Kuleshov Effect, a photographic interpretive method discovered in 1918 by Soviet film pioneer Lev Kuleshov.Price: $50Publisher: Self PublishedArtist Website:www.jedfielding.com

Julie Weber, REMNANTS, 2017
In the early 2000s, Julie Weber was working as a technician for a one-hour photo processing lab when vernacular photography was experiencing a monumental shift from film to digital processes. Fascinated by the lab’s first dye-sublimation printer, Weber kept the scrap material from the photographs she processed. Weber created the imagery for REMNANTS by layering, folding, cutting and creasing this material byproduct into new configurations that illustrate the CMY color model and obscure the degree of visibility of the original image. The book is a portfolio of 12 unbound sheets: on one side, twelve individual images are presented, and on the other side, the twelve pieces can be arranged to form a single, composite image.

Andrew Baris,Its All Down Cellar, 2016
Spending over a year exploring photography in book form and how images can relate to each other through sequencing and layout, I realized my BFA thesis work made the most sense as a photo book. The book is titled “It’s All Down Cellar” Here is a brief artist statement.

“My grandmother was the matriarch of our family. As a child I witnessed her hosting family gatherings, taking care of all her children’s children (including myself at one time), and being a thoroughly devoted wife. Two years ago she was diagnosed with dementia, and with that came a loss of personal identity. The stillness of space around my grandfather signifies the void left by his wife’s absence. The documentation of my family became even more complex after I was diagnosed with diabetes. My apprehension of change and aging intensified and the subject of loss became important for me to explore deeper.

Photographing the landscape became a form of catharsis for me, and within the context of the series the images formed a visual representation of change. I began to make more self-portraits both inside and out, and the changing seasons seemed to correlate with my developing sensibility. Using photography I have established a basis for making art through personal incident. The relationships depicted in the imagery offer a poetic glimpse into the complex nature of family and its shifting dynamics. While this family is mine, the transference of thought and emotion is universal.”
The book itself is also accompanied by a zine insert titled “Put Your Shoes Away”, which represents an idolized version of my family life as it once was.Publisher: Self PublishedArtist Website:www.andrewbaris.com

Small Talk Collective, We’re Always Touching by Underground Wires, 2018
Change is incremental, barely noticed, until it’s sudden and irrevocable. A house slowly ages and wears, until abruptly, it’s demolished and gone. Inside our own homes, we find imperfections and repairs, evidence of former occupants and our former selves. We feel these transitions and make new connections: between a bird discovered in a field and one dismembered by a cat, between the furrows on a face and those on the landscape, impressions left on skin and in memory. We look for change and find its mark. We look at what is, attempting to find the shape of what was.

We’re Always Touching by Underground Wires is Small Talk Collective’s first publication together. A limited run of 150 books was printed locally in Portland, OR and released during Portland Photo Month alongside a gallery show of the same name. The book showcases work from all seven photographers that is tied together visually and conceptually. All work was shot in January and the first part of February 2018. The project partially funded by a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.Price: $28Publisher: Self PublishedArtist Website:www.smalltalkcollective.comAdd to your own Library collection

Lisa Zalud, Yonder, 2017
The book is a very intimate portrait of someone struggling to find himself, like many of us. Who is on the winding path to search for his own individuality and individual fulfillment. In times where it is hard for people to deeply connect with someone out of fear to might loose oneself – while the self isn´t even really explored. Someone who is chased by the desire of individual freedom which is impossible to live as long as he is trapped in the construction of own illusions. A portrait of a lone wolf who craves for physical and emotional closeness but simultaneously fears allowing himself to fall.Price: $20Publisher: Self PublishedArtist Website:zalud.co

Shawn Campbell, GETSOME, 2016
One day I told myself that I needed to document our lives. There is something different about us. A simple 35mm point-and shoot camera with a built-in flash helped me document the critical moments that were occurring in and around my life. I just started shooting rolls and rolls of film. By capturing the habits, associations, indecencies, deviances, and freedoms we have experienced, I am able to record the moments that define us. The photographs are crude and raunchy but show a experience that can’t be displayed in any other way.Price: $50Publisher: Self PublishedArtist Website:www.shawncampbellstudio.com

Frank Hamrick, My Face Tastes Like Salt, 2017
My face tastes like salt is a series of original tintypes and also an artist’s book limited to 41 hardcover copies featuring reproductions of eighteen tintypes. The title My face tastes like salt was something my nephew said when he was just a few years old. These portraits, still lives and landscapes, originally created as 8×10” and 8×8” tintypes, focus on looking at and moving through the natural world around us. The cover art is relief printed on handmade cotton rag paper and the edition number is letterpress printed on the handmade cotton rag end sheet in the back of each book.Price: $200Publisher: Old Fan PressArtist Website:frankhamrick.comAdd to your own Library collection

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Did you know that we feature a new photographer every single day? This means we are always seeking new work to be published! If you have a body of work that you want to share with us, consider submitting today! Check out the link below for details!